11/13/2012

They've Lost Their Fucking Minds Again (Limbaugh Edition):
Think of radio host Rush Limbaugh at this point as an old, wounded walrus, lying half on the rocks of an Alaskan island, half in the water, bellowing sadly into the Arctic night, waiting to be finished off by either a polar bear or a killer whale, its blubber being enough to keep other beasts warm for the entire approaching winter.

While other Republicans and conservatives are doing some real soul-searching in the wake of the 2012 election, Limbaugh is reaching under his gut to touch his tiny prick to get it up one more time and jack off on the airwaves of America. Listen, children, oh, yes, listen to the harrowing yowls of anguish and denial, listen, please, once more, to the fading cries of the dying walrus:

"When Democrats lose elections, do they ever say, 'You know what? We may have to give up this gay marriage position of ours and sort of abandon that. We may need to stand up for traditional marriage.' Do the Democrats ever say that when they lose elections? No. After the Democrats lose elections, do they ever say, 'You know, I think we've got to abandon this effort to shut down Second Amendment. We're gonna have to understand it. We're really out of touch. We're alienating our voters who love guns. We're gonna have to become big advocates of the Second Amendment'? Do Democrats ever say that when they lose elections? Do the Democrats, after they lose elections, all run to the media and start agonizing over where they're going wrong?"

Limbaugh went on like that yesterday, asking if Democrats ever think they need to cut taxes when they lose, or if Democrats ever think about toning down their "rhetoric," or, horror of horrors, "Do Democrats, when they are losing elections, ever blame their media?"

The only way to unpack all that 300 pounds of bullshit shoved into a hundred pound bag is to say: "Umm, Rush? You were around in the 1980s. Sure, sure, there's been a whole lot of drugs and one or two too many marriages since then, but you are familiar with the Reagan Revolution, no?"

Ah, precious children, the Democratic Party did once believe in what we called "gun control," which included a ban on handguns. It did once believe in abortion with few restrictions. It did believe in higher taxes for all. It believed in all those liberal monsters that Limbaugh wants you to think it still believes in.

But, oh, you must listen: in the wake of the Reagan ass-kicking, Democrats did reassess everything. And it went right. It watered down gun control to merely be that people shouldn't be able to own a few high-powered, military-grade automatic weapons. It accepted that abortion rights would be highly regulated, sometimes even going along with ludicrous and onerous laws. And taxes? Democrats voted to cut taxes again and again. And then, in 1994, after the Gingrich ascendancy, Democrats went even further to the right. Look it up. Look up Bill Clinton's triangulation on issues like "welfare reform." It all pissed off we true-blue liberals, this endless moderation, this ludicrous amount of compromise of principle until the principles themselves changed. However, to say that, on any level, that Democrats never questioned their beliefs in the wake of an election loss is just another lie of the endless series of lies told about us. It's as big a lie to themselves as declaring that Romney would win.

This is going to be one strain of Republican reaction: don't abandon the program - it is good and right - just sell it better. That's like saying that you didn't get syphilis because you like to bang whores without a condom, but because you chose the wrong whorehouse. Oh, hey, let's try fucking across the street and see how that works out. Not only does it not occur to you to use protection, but you can't see that perhaps you shouldn't be banging whores at all.

Here is the message you need again and again: it is what you believe. And it is how you relate to the world. Democrats went right in the 1980s and 1990s. Republicans went further right to differentiate themselves, so far that they went out the door.

And now a few conservatives are saying, "Perhaps we've gone too far." And a fat, decrepit bastard whose ability to pay alimony depends on whipping up more and more hatred is demanding that the reflection end before it begins.